Adam Rodrigues - EDUC 450B Blog

Much like my experience in EDCP 342A, this course helped broaden my perspectives of what it means to be an educator in math and science. I feel like the readings, discussions, and events (such as attending the Reconciling Ways of Knowing talk) provided a rich content base for reflection.  I am now more aware of how math and science teachers can (and arguably, should) incorporate issues of social justice and activism into their teaching. This is something that I have usually avoided in the past because I am not that comfortable with my knowledge level on certain issues or how to integrate it smoothly into the curriculum. I've come to realize though that learning to facilitate appropriate discussion and finding creative ways of making the curriculum relevant are what is necessary. A teacher can't possibly be an expert in everything, but a teacher can always lead meaningful inquiry and discussion in respectful and intelligent ways. Also, I really enjoyed the inquiry project. I fee...

Slides: https://drive.google.com/file/d/19NSQ-7Ydyjy5Nc81KkO-22_X5BTr6O-9/view?usp=sharing Reflection: Having the opportunity to research an area of personal interest was highly motivating and exciting. The hardest part of the inquiry project for me might have actually been deciding on my research topic and questions because there were so many facets of mathematics and physics education that intrigued me.       Initially, I began reading about promoting conceptual thinking in mathematics through creative question design, but then I stumbled across the vast body of educational research discussing proofs. In fact, after doing some initial reading, I was pretty curious about whether or not incorporating proofs and proving in a secondary mathematics setting could be an effective way to promote conceptual thinking. My literature review affirmed this hypothesis and also described many other benefits that come from the teaching and learning of mathematical proof. At the sam...

Today, I worked on gathering few more resources for my literature review (including some from Susan's recommendations) and also discussing my research topic and questions with my peers. At this point, I have established my topic as proofs and mathematical argumentation in secondary mathematics education. Some guiding questions of my research are: 1. What are the benefits to including proofs and mathematical argumentation in the secondary math curriculum? 2. What are some challenges that students and teachers face that inhibit the use of proofs in the math classroom. 3. How can teachers effectively engage and guide students in the process of learning to prove and argue mathematically? The next steps of my research will be to read approximately 4-8 more research papers on the topic, and also contact people from the teaching and learning community for conversations. I plan to devise a list of questions for my interviewees in the coming days. I intend to reach out to some or all of the...

  Topic: The relevance of proofs in secondary mathematics education. Guiding questions:  What are the benefits of learning and generating proofs or mathematical arguments? What are challenges to focusing on proofs in math education? (Such as teacher or student ability, for example) How to implement this in the classroom? How to integrate with curriculum and effectively instruct/coach students? Works Cited: Ball, D. L., Hoyles, C., Jahnke, H. N., & Movshovitz-Hadar, N. (2003). The teaching of proof.                             ArXiv:Math/0305021. http://arxiv.org/abs/math/0305021 • Ball et al. discuss the importance of making student argumentation and problem solving “public” in the classroom so that constructive feedback and learning can happen between students and student-teacher • The importance of how the need to prove is motivated (ie. from real problems or a challenge of how ...

I've been really busy over practicum and the last week so I'm just getting into the research and reading now. As I started the literature review, I have been considering switching to one of the other topics that I was initially considering. I want to make sure that the topic that I choose is meaningful to me and also has a good amount of existing literature available to learn from.  I have now collected 5-8+ articles in Zotero for each of the following broad research topics: - Conceptual thinking in math - Conceptual thinking in physics - Mathematical Proofs at the Secondary Level   I think I will revise my specific research question as I learn a bit more on the topic that I end up choosing through the literature review. I have a lot of work to do in the coming weeks, but from our recent reading, I know that this process is not linear, and it's okay to start with a period of intense thinking (even if productivity seems low). To connect the literature review to the "rea...

For my inquiry project, I intend to learn about optimal design for math problems that emphasize conceptual thinking more than algorithmic approaches. Some concepts that I wish to investigate within this topic are: The benefits of relational understanding Typical poor performance on conceptual questions in assessments Preparing students to succeed with these types of questions in assessments

In our discussion, a common thread that emerged was how practical constraints such as limited time, high volume of curricular content, or a quarterly system can affect teachers' ability to lead their students in creative science or mathematics. Further challenges to permitting creativity in science or mathematics also often come from the disposition of students, formed by their previous years of schooling and by the thinking of their peers and prior teachers. We discussed how teachers can try to reset expectations for themselves and their own classes that are realistic given the constraints in place, but also practice creativity in inventing ways to integrate creativity in their classes. This is usually harder to do than the typical cook-book type teaching, but arguably, essential for deeper student learning.